There are many situations in which garment hangers must be provided under circumstances in which the public can purloin the hangers. This causes inconvenience for subsequent would be users and replacement is a significant expense for the facility providing the hangers. Examples of such facilities include motels, hotels, restaurants, meeting halls and any other facility used by the public at which it is desirable or necessary that garment hanging equipment be provided. The problem has been aggravated by the fact that the cost of providing attendant operated garment checking facilities has become too expensive to maintain.
The problem is not new and various devices have been developed in the past in an effort to prevent hanger theft. One device has been to mount clips, one for each hanger on the support rod. Each clip has a generally horizontal leg with a slot. The hanger, instead of a hook, has an upstanding rod with a ball or short cross bar at the top too big to pass through the slot. The hanger is supported from the clip by the ball or cross rod but can be removed by sliding it out of the end of the slot. This is basically theft proof because the hanger is useless without the clips which are permanently mounted on the rod. Another device having the same objective is to equip the hangers with supports which are really eyelets entirely surrounding the support rod, making it impossible to mount or to remove the hangers except by dismounting the support rod and sliding the hangers off the end of the rod. This arrangement is very inconvenient to the user because the garments must be mounted and removed from the hangers while they remain on the support rod. Also, if a hanger is broken, replacement is a labor intensive operation.
Another approach has been forming an upturned lip or the like on the end of the hook and providing a bar which is pivoted down over the support rod and locked in place to prevent the hangers from being so manipulated that they can be lifted free of the support rod. This arrangement has the same disadvantages of the eyelet arrangement besides being complicated and expensive.